Ah, then she was still upset.
“It was presumptuous of ye,” he said.
She shifted her focus from the endless path cut through the forest ahead of them and slowly regarded him. The auburn curls framing her face were wet with the rain, dark and clinging to her fair skin. “What was?”
“Ye thinking I took ye into my army so I could have ye as my leman.”
Her mouth parted in indignation. “I didn’t...”
He raised a brow at her feeble protest. They both knew she’d said as much in the cave.
She narrowed her eyes at him, ever as feisty as she’d always been.
William angled his horse to pull a large branch hanging overhead in their path. A twinge at his side reminded him to have a care for his injury. “I took ye on because ye’re a good archer. No’ because I wanted ye.”
He released the branch, and beads of water cascaded down from the leaves, joining the rain and spilling over him.
A flush colored her cheeks, all the more appealing by the knowledge she didn’t often blush. Not like the other women with whom he’d flirted.
“I see.” She swiped at the wet curls on her brow, pushing them back. A small white scar, the size of his thumbnail, was suddenly visible at her hairline. How had he not noticed that before?
“Ye’re right,” she said in the span of silence. “I was presumptuous. I assumed ye wanted to kiss me.”
“Oh, I did.” He was free with his admission, knowing none of the others on the trail around them could hear. Their words would be drowned out by the falling rain, and the thick cloaks pulled over everyone’s heads.
Kinsey turned her wide blue eyes on him in surprise, and he chuckled. “Ye’re a bonny lass. Of course, I wanted to kiss ye.” He winked. “Mayhap more than that.”
She pulled in a breath. Now her cheeks were nearly as red as her hair.
He grinned at the accomplishment. “But that doesna mean I want ye as my leman. Ye’ve far more value to me as an archer.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said primly. “I’ve no interest in being anything other than yer archer.”
He hadn’t imagined her response to him in the cave and thus was aware of the lie of her claim. But he didn’t press the issue. Instead, he shifted the topic so their conversation could be left in her thoughts to simmer.
“Is yer mum English, or yer da?” He nonchalantly asked the question, as though it were merely a curiosity. And it was to an extent.
He needed to know where her loyalties truly lay. With an English clip to her words and a brother who worked for one of King Edward’s earls, she might not be fully with Scotland.
William had been willing to brush aside the topic of her brother offering her information, but it was certainly not forgotten. Not when her loyalties could be questioned. And not when such knowledge could help a future attempt for Mabrick Castle end in victory.
Kinsey didn’t answer right away.
“Ye know ye can trust me, aye?” He winked at her. Lasses always loved when he winked.
She frowned at him but still replied. “My da, but he’s dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said solemnly. And he was. Having grown up without a mother, he knew what it was like to lose a parent early in life. “I dinna know my mum. She succumbed to fever soon after my birth. Did ye know yer da?”
He popped open a wineskin of ale, took a sip, then offered it to her.
She accepted it with a nod of thanks. “I was young, but my brother was on the battlefield with him when it happened. My da was an English knight.” She drank, leaning her head back, so her long, slender neck arched gracefully.
“Fighting the Scottish?” William surmised.
Kinsey lowered the wineskin and attached the dangling cork in the opening before handing it back to him. “Aye. We were living in England at the time.”
Her lip curled slightly.
“I take it ye dinna enjoy living there?” he pressed.
She scowled and gazed ahead at the muddy trail. “I didn’t like how they treated us after my da died. They wouldn’t sell us food, and they refused work to my mum. We had nothing—she was a widow with four small children, and not one of them offered aid.”
He couldn’t imagine Kinsey as a helpless child. Nothing about her seemed helpless. But then, he knew well the cruelties of the English, even if he’d never gone hungry as she had. “Bastards,” William muttered.
Kinsey’s fingers tightened perceptively on her reins. “Aye.”
The chirping songs of birds and the rhythmic thud of their horse’s hooves on the forest floor filled the space between them.
The sky began to darken as the sun they couldn’t see began to sink. They would be stopping to make camp soon. Which meant William needed to readjust the focus of their conversation.
“Why does yer brother work for an English earl?” He made the question sound like the idea had suddenly come to him, as though he hadn’t been thinking of it since the cave.
Except that he had.
Kinsey scoffed. “He’s got it in his head that he can be a knight like our da was.” She shook her head in obvious aggravation. “They’ll never accept him, but he’ll never stop hoping.”
“Ye dinna think we can get him to join us?” he asked.
She laughed at that. “Drake would never turn his back on the Earl of Werrick. Not for all the coin in the world.”
“Has he no’ ever considered being a knight for Scotland?”
Kinsey lifted a single shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t think he’s ever tried. He set his mind on an English knighthood and has never been drawn away since.”
“Even if they’re using him?” William rubbed at the back of his neck. “They’ll do that. Use one’s dreams against them in an effort to get anything they want.”
He let his words sink in before continuing. “We’re aiding the new king and restoring his kingdom. He
